SHIPMAN, ANDREW JACKSON

Lawyer, author; b. Springvale, Fairfax County, VA, Oct. 15, 1857; d. New York City, Oct. 17, 1915. He was the son of John James and Priscilla (Carroll) Shipman. After private tutoring he attended Georgetown College (now University), Washington, DC, graduating in 1878. He joined the Catholic Church while he was a student at Georgetown. After moving to Hocking Valley, OH (1880), where he became superintendent of W. P. Rend & Company, a coal mining firm, he displayed unusual interest in the Eastern–rite Catholics, who were numerous among the miners and whose religious needs were inadequately met. In 1884 he became a clerk in the New York Customs House, and two years later he obtained a law degree from the University of the City of New York. After his marriage to Adair Mooney in 1893, he established Blandy, Mooney, & Shipman, a law firm specializing in cases involving Greek–rite Catholics and ecclesiastical law; it handled the St. Stephen's Church cases (1890–1900) and the Hopkins will cases (1902–06).

In addition to his law practice, Shipman was active in civic and charitable affairs. He supported the mar quette league for Indian missionaries and promoted the Catholic Theater Movement. He served as delegate to the New York constitutional convention (1915), director of the Sevilla Home for Children and the Mohansic State Hospital, and member of the New York Board of Regents. His principal concern, however, was the welfare of Greek, Slavic, and Ruthenian Catholics. His knowledge of their life and language was intimate; he labored to interest the bishops in their problems, helped to promote their cultural assimilation, and acted as their most effective propagandist, seeking to make Catholics aware of them, explaining their rites, and dispelling Catholic fears about their orthodoxy. He wrote about them in such popular publications as McClure's Magazine and in the Catholic Encyclopedia, of which he was a director. He also translated their rite into English in The Holy Mass according to the Greek Rite (1911), participated actively in their local affairs, helped establish a Ruthenian Catholic Church, organized a Ukrainian choir, and assisted the Syrian Church of St. Joachim. He was an adviser to Bp. Stephen S. Ortynsky, who officiated at a Greek rite funeral service for him in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City.

Bibliography: c. b. pallen, ed., A Memorial of Andrew J. Shipman (New York 1916).

[j. l. morrison]